Sorry for being away so long...

Exchange programs have a big effect in the world.

I have a project called Alternatives to the War on Terror: Restraint, Cooperation, and Outreach. In it I share an argument that by emphasizing war as the primary way that the US makes its relationship with the rest of the world, it prevents the US from making the kind of progress that we really want: more peace, more security, and more prosperity. It guarantees conflict as a self-fulfilling prophesy of eternal war. That we must expect better from our leaders is a main point as well. Check it out.

One of the other main points is to suggest a better alternative to this emphasis: three principles that would make a huge difference and help us actually achieve our goals. They are: Restraint, Cooperation, and Outreach, from the title of the project. The outreach portion is difficult to sell to people because exchange programs seem like "soft" initiatives that would have little impact.

Then I stumbled upon the story below, about how new immigration rules in the US are causing many prospective foreign students to stay away from the US.

This is a huge loss for America, but the story contains a very interesting tidbit: an exchange student to the US from the USSR eventually had influence upon the leadership of the Soviet Union as it was moving away from the socialist model.

As you can read below, a Soviet party official, Aleksandr Yakovlev, was influenced by his time in the US and that change in him affected his influence on Soviet leaders including Gorbachev. His participation in education in the US, a form of exchange, helped change the USSR and helped change history.

This is the greater power of positive relationships. This story illustrates how nonviolent student exchange, an example of Outreach, can bring about great change, without having to cost thousands of lives.

This is a stark contrast to the views of the leadership in the US that believes that war is the best (and only) way to interact with the world following 9-11.

Their obsession with war condemns all of us to live diminished lives that do not know what peace feels like.

This anecdote below, about how a Soviet exchange student to the US helped change history - peacefully, shows the strength of the alternative that building positive international relationships provide.

We don't need their wars to make a better world. There are powerful alternatives that work better.

This is an understanding that US leadership would rather that you didn't have.

You have it now.
I hope that it empowers you.

Universal

New York Times
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
You Can't Get Here From There
By JOSEPH S. NYE Jr.
Published: November 29, 2004

Cambridge, Mass. — Last year, the number of foreign students at American
colleges and universities fell for the first time since 1971. Recent reports
show that total foreign student enrollment in our 2,700 colleges and
universities dropped 2.4 percent, with a much sharper loss at large research
institutions. Two-thirds of the 25 universities with the most foreign
students reported major enrollment declines.

The costs to the American economy are significant. Educating foreign
students is a $13 billion industry. Moreover, the United States does not
produce enough home-grown doctoral students in science and engineering to
meet our needs. The shortfall is partly made up by the many foreign students
who stay here after earning their degrees.

Equally important, however, are the foreign students who return home and
carry American ideas with them. They add to our soft power, the ability to
win the hearts and minds of others. As Secretary of State Colin Powell put
it, "I can think of no more valuable asset to our country than the
friendship of future world leaders who have been educated here."
One cause of the recent decline has been increased competition from
universities elsewhere, particularly in English-speaking countries like
Britain and Australia. But most observers attribute our loss to a
self-inflicted wound. Ever since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, getting
an American visa has been a nightmare of red tape, and the hassle has
deterred many foreign student applicants.

Horror stories abound, like the Harvard postdoctoral student in biochemistry
who went home to Beijing for his father's funeral, then waited five months
for permission to return. And China, of course, had nothing to do with the
attacks on Sept. 11.

In an effort to exclude a dangerous few, we are keeping out the helpful
many. Consular officials know that they face career-threatening punishment
if they are too lax, but face little sanction if they are too strict. Add to
those perverse incentives, the need to coordinate with the extensive
bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security, and you have a perfect
recipe for inertia. More resources can help speed the process, but little
will happen until Congress and the Bush administration make the problem a
higher priority.

The admission of foreign students to the United States has been
controversial in the past. During the cold war, the Eisenhower
administration negotiated a student exchange program with the Soviet Union.
Opponents argued that our Soviet enemies would misuse the student visas to
send spies who would steal our scientific and industrial secrets. That did
occur, but it was not the most important effect of the program.
In the first exchange in 1958, one of the students was a young Communist
Party official named Aleksandr Yakovlev. He was strongly influenced by his
studies of pluralism with David Truman, the Columbia political scientist.
Mr. Yakovlev eventually went home to become the director of an important
institute, a Politburo member, and one of the key liberalizing influences on
Mikhail Gorbachev. A fellow student, Oleg Kalugin, who became a high
official in the KGB, said of the visa program: "Exchanges were a Trojan
horse for the Soviet Union. They played a tremendous role in the erosion of
the Soviet system. ...They kept infecting more and more people over the
years."

Starting in the 1950's, more than 110 American colleges and universities
participated; some 50,000 Soviet academics, writers, journalists, officials
and artists visited from 1958 to 1988. Imagine if the visa hawks had
prevented Mr. Yakovlev and his like from entering the United States.
Balancing security risks against the political and economic benefits of
admitting foreign students has always been a problem. It is now doubly
difficult in a post-Sept. 11 world, but the recent enrollment decline
suggest we have not yet got the balance right.

Joseph S. Nye Jr., a professor of government at Harvard, is the author, most
recently, of "The Power Game: A Washington Novel."